He was the spirit of the E Street Band, and the oaken staff that Bruce Springsteen leaned on. There have been many charismatic figures in the band, but none had the personal gravity of Clarence Clemons, the group’s Bunyanesque saxophonist."

When a local woman is found dead, her body drained of blood, the stakes become life and death. With Vlad the #1 suspect, Abby and Marco race to find the real killer, before Vlad's life really starts to suck."

I have a feeling that most of you order the Stark House books automatically, but just in case you don't, here's one you really need. It's coming in August, and, as is so often the case with these editions, David Laurence Wilson's introduction is invaluable. This is a must-have.

In July 2011, Top Notch Thrillers is proud to reissue two great British thrillers from the early 1980’s, both of which are fine examples of ‘flight and pursuit’ novels in the John Buchan tradition.

Geoffrey Household (1900-88), often seen as the natural successor to John Buchan, is rightly famous for his 1939 classic Rogue Male about an aristocratic English big game hunter’s failed attempt to assassinate Hitler and his subsequent fight for survival as the hunter becomes the hunted.

More than 40 years after that ground-breaking thriller, Geoffrey Household gave us the sequel, Rogue Justice, where the background to the previously anonymous ‘Rogue Male’ is revealed as he declares his own private war on Nazi Germany, blazing a blood-stained trail from Poland to Greece to dispense his own type of justice on the brutal ideology which has destroyed the Europe – and the woman – that he loved.

Not only is Rogue Justice a sustained, fast-moving action thriller, told with all Household’s usual skill when it comes to a pursuit over wild terrain and his self-depreciating humour, it is at heart a dark, nobly romantic but fatalistic love story. For the rogue hero this time, it is not a question of whether he will survive, but how he will choose to meet his death....

*

Jessica Mann is well-known as a broadcaster, journalist and crime-writer and is currently the crime fiction critic for the Literary Review.

Her 1981 novel Funeral Sites is nothing less than an updated, feminist take on John Buchan’s famous tale of flight and pursuit, The 39 Steps, as the main character finds herself on the run from her politically ambitious (and murderous) brother-in-law.In a frenzied escape from a Swiss alp via London’s club land to a Cambridge hospital, she finds a lone ally in feisty archaeologist Tamara Hoyland, who was to become Jessica Mann’s series heroine, and the chase comes full circle in a dramatic showdown back in the Swiss mountains.

Funeral Sites is a frantic, breathlessly-paced chase thriller which puts a female stamp on what had seemed until then a very male preserve and whilst staying true to the form, the novel cheekily references the work of John Buchan – and indeed Geoffrey Household, another master of the genre.

Jessica Mann is the first woman to join the ranks of British authors reissued under the Top Notch Thriller imprint, who include: John Gardner, Victor Canning, Brian Callison, Duncan Kyle, Francis Clifford and Adam Hall.

Rogue Justice ISBN 9781906288549

Funeral Sites ISBN 9781906288600*

(*also available as an eBook)

*

Top Notch Thrillers is a specialist imprint of Ostara Publishing which was established in 2009 to revive Great British thrillers “which do not deserve to be forgotten” using the latest print-on-demand technology and offering many titles as eBooks for the first time. The series editor is Mike Ripley, who currently writes the ‘Getting Away With Murder’ column on www.shotsmag.co.uk.

By September 2011, there will be 20 Top Notch Thrillers available in print and (in many cases) electronic formats. They can be purchased through good bookshops or Amazon and via the Ostara website (www.ostarapublishing.co.uk) which contains much additional information of TNT books and authors.

NYTimes.com: "Wild Man Fischer, a mentally ill street musician who became a darling of the pop music industry in the 1960s and as a result enjoyed four decades of strange, intermittent and often ill-fitting celebrity, died on Thursday in Los Angeles. He was 66."

Friday, June 17, 2011

Amazon.com: A Hard Day's Fright (A Pepper Martin Mystery) (9780425240564): Casey Daniels: Books: "What happened to a teenager named Lucy one night in 1966 after a Beatles concert? She rushed the stage, kissed Paul, started home with her friends, and was never seen again-until cemetery guide and unintentional PI to the dead Pepper Martin sees her as a ghost. Lucy's spirit can't rest in peace until her body is found and buried. But how will Pepper track down a missing corpse after forty-five years?"

bonappetit.com: "Aaron Franklin opened a food trailer on a vacant lot in Austin in 2009. Today, his bricks-and-mortar restaurant serves what we're calling the best BBQ in Texas, if not America. Let the debates begin"

Some years ago, Judy and I read a terrific book called The Man with the Iron-on Badge by Lee Goldberg. We loved it. The publisher was Five Star, and we both thought the book would be a big hit. We were wrong. It got great reviews. It was nominated for a Shamus. It sold well for a Five Star book, but there was never a paperback edition, and the book more or less disappeared from the public consciousness. Now, however, Goldberg's making a big push for the book on Kindle and Nook under this new title. If you haven't read it, you might want to give it a try. You just might find yourself making the best discovery of the year.

NJ.com: "An Ocean County man learned today that a rattlesnake on the road best be left in peace.

The 24-year-old man was reported in stable condition last night after being bitten by a timber rattlesnake he had tried to grab by its head, said Larry Ragonese, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection."

New Pulp Press has established itself in a very short time as a fearless publisher of books that are different. Really different. You never know what to expect, and that's a good thing.

Jesus Angel Garcia's badbadbad features a narrator with the same name as the author. His wife leaves him, and he gets involved with hellfire preaching, webmastering, and lots of sex. Satire and some wild and crazy stuff. Not exactly a crime novel, and not like anything else you're likely to read this year.

If you're a teenager who's having more than the usual troubles (you do your homework, but it disappears; your mother's disappeared, too; bullies are after you more than usual, etc.), who you gonna call? Mr. Trouble, of course.

The problem with Mr. Trouble is that you don't get just him. You get his whole semi-functional family, so things are likely to get even more complicated than you thought. That's what Eric finds out in this action-packed YA from Brett Battles. Eric also finds out that creatures called the Makers are after him. He's not the first they've tried to get, and they've often been successful. Just exactly why they want him and what happens if they get him isn't entirely explained. That's because there's probably going to be a sequel. If you like fast and funny YA with, as I said, lots of action, you'll get a kick out of Here Comes Mr. Trouble. Check it out.

Starpulse.com: "Hugh Hefner's former fiance Crystal Harris broke down in tears during her first TV interview since the split, revealing she called off the wedding because she was 'not the only woman in Hef's life.'"

Cat Survives High Rise Plunge: "A nine year old cat survived a 14-story plunge from an Upper West Side apartment building.[. . . .]The family rushed Copper to an emergency vet on West 55th St. She ended up only needing to be treated for a fractured foot and is doing well at home."

A Vampire Named Fred By Bill Crider - eBook - Kobo: "When someone finally moves into the old dark musty house next door two boys make an unusual friend. 'I always thought that vampires had to have names like Dracula or Vlad or Lestat but that was before Fred moved into the house next door. In fact I had a lot of wrong ideas about vampires but Fred set me straight about most of them.' In a funny lively story the boys set out to help Fred lead a 'normal' life."

For some reason I don't have Volume 1 of this anthology, and that's something I need to remedy because this one's terrific. It's sadly lacking an introduction (maybe that's on Volume 1), but it does have a complete index of Galaxy magazine from the first issue of October 1950 to May 1979.

The stories, as you could probably guess from looking at the contributors' names on the cover, are great. What's even better is the "memoirs" provided by most of the authors. (The explanation for why John Varley refused to provide one for "Overdrawn at the Memory Bank" is as interesting as the memoirs.) Reading Philip K. Dick's memoir that introduces "Oh, to Be a Blobel!" is chilling. I sure wish he were around to comment on the current wars we're waging. Alfred Bester, whose name is on the cover, doesn't have a story in the book, but he does have a brief memoir about Horace Gold and Galaxy. There's no story by Algis Budrys, either, but there's one of his book review columns in which he doesn't actually review any books.

If you like good science-fiction short stories, or just plain good fiction, you should take a look at this one, and don't miss those memoirs. As for me, I'm going over to Abebooks and get Volume 1.

When you're looking for the Good Old Stuff, you can count on Black Dog Books to provide it. As the cover tells you, this well-designed volume contains 13 rare Sax Rohmer stories, 4 of which haven't been previously published in the U. S. That should be enough encouragement right there. Most of the stories appeared before the creation of Fu Manchu, so they give you a good look at the author's beginnings.

SignOnSanDiego.com: "A 56-year-old Valley Center Middle School teacher was arrested early Sunday morning following a wild, drunken party held at her home attended by at least 100, mostly inebriated, teenagers, officials said.

Sheriff’s Sgt. Bob Bishop said empty hard liquor and beer bottles were strewed about the house on Puma Trail. Teenagers were passed out on couches in their own vomit, and there was even a strip poker game going on in one bedroom involving four girls being photographed by boys."

The weird western is a special category, and it's always a treat to run across a new one, especially one this good. David Nial Wilson and Steven Savile give everything you could ask for: signs, portents, mysteries, and wonders; blazing guns; snakes; life and death and returns from the dead; deals with the devil; love that goes beyond life; ancient forces doing battle outside a small western town; hidden identities; and more. It's all finely detailed, with lots of atmospheric description interspersed among the action scenes. If you're looking for something different, here's a book that delivers.

This supernatural thriller has a lot going on, including a cop in love with a woman who shot him (and whom he regularly visits in prison), a lighthouse in the woods, a woman who's establishing a sanctuary for big cats (lions, cougars, leopards, tigers, a panther), and lots of mysterious deaths. There's so much going on, in fact, that you might wonder if Koryta can integrate it all and bring off a satisfactory conclusion. He almost manages it.

If you're looking for a conventional thriller, this one isn't it. The strong supernatural element takes it in another direction. Tight suspense, and some good scares along the way, with Koryta's usual good writing. Check it out.

AbeBooks: Titus Groan Awakes: Mervyn Peake & The Lost Gormenghast Novel: "Mervyn Peake’s epic Gormenghast fantasy trilogy is a trilogy no more. Rumors of a fourth novel circulated for years but were always just rumors. In January 2010 the granddaughter of Peake’s widow found a complete manuscript that her mother, Maeve Gilmore, had written in the 1970s based on notes Mervyn Peake had written before dying at the age of 57 from Parkinson's Disease. The results of Gilmore’s labor have since been edited and will now appear, just in time for the centenary of the author’s birth, as Titus Awakes."

Every year I buy ten tickets in the annual Lion's Club raffle. I never expect to win anything, but this year I got a prize. A 42-inch Vizio 3-D TV set. So the question is, what do I do with it? There's no place for it here. I suppose this is a good problem to have, and now I can stop saying I never won anything.

Sandra Bullock: Ghost Hunting In London: "Sandra Bullock is currently in London filming a Sci-Fi thriller called 'Gravity' with George Clooney, but the Sun, a British tabloid, reports her offscreen activities are more focused on the paranormal.

The Oscar-winning actress is staying in a converted church, but sources say she is asking her producers to investigate the dwelling because she fears it's haunted."

This collection was born out of the writers' concern for the people in the disaster zone. SHAKEN: STORIES FOR JAPAN is an attempt by writers to pool their talents to help people in need, as musicians and actors so often do.

The book contains original stories by Brett Battles, Cara Black, Vicki Doudera, Dianne Emley, Dale Furutani, Timothy Hallinan, Stefan Hammond, Rosemary Harris, Naomi Hirahara, Wendy Hornsby, Ken Kuhlken, Debbi Mack, Adrian McKinty, I.J. Parker, Gary Phillips, Hank Phillippi Ryan, Jeffrey Siger, Kelli Stanley, C.J. West, and Jeri Westerson. As a group, these authors have won every mystery award there is and sold hundreds of thousand of copies. They're all working at the top of their games in this volume. SHAKEN; STORIES FROM JAPAN is art for heart's sake, and the purchase price will help those who are struggling to repair, or at least soothe, these terrible losses."

The Raw Story: "Scientists at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine claim to have determined the proper dose levels needed to create positive changes in attitudes, mood, life satisfaction, and behavior that persist for more than a year with the psychoactive substance in so-called 'magic mushrooms.'"

Amazon.com: Night Medicine (Lieutenant Joe Sonntag Mysteries) eBook: Axel Brand: Kindle Store: "It's summer, 1948, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The body of a lovely, well-dressed young woman is discovered at the Washington Park Zoo, near the lion cages. She is lying in a bed of ferns, her arms folded over her breast, her skirts smoothed and her legs straight. Nearby a lioness prowls her cage. Clearly, someone cared about this unknown young woman, and laid her out as if she were in a funeral home. Why she was placed there, in that fashion, is a riddle that Detective Joe Sonntag and his gifted staff try to solve.His quest leads him into strange dark corners, where compassion and death intersect."

The Galaxy Project: "The Galaxy Project is both a celebration - through new editions in widely distributed electronic form - of the great 1950's Galaxy Magazine, edited by H. L. Gold and a means through these new electronic editions of classic longer works and through its new novella contest to carry forth that tradition in the new millennium."

Mother Nature Network: "J.K. Rowling, author of the 'Harry Potter' series, has been given planning permission to knock down a $1.6 million home outside of Edinburgh, Scotland, for the sole purpose of expanding her personal garden."

'I always thought that vampires had to have names like Dracula or Vlad or Lestat, but that was before Fred moved into the house next door. In fact, I had a lot of wrong ideas about vampires, but Fred set me straight about most of them.'

In a funny, lively story the boys set out to help Fred lead a 'normal' life."

You know when you read anything by Anthony Neil Smith that you're in for a wild ride, so here we go again. Mike Thooft is a poet and college teacher. His wife is unfaithful. Boy, is she ever. In fact, the first half of this book could have been a 1960s Bedside Book titled Faculty Orgy Club. There's some funny academic satire throughout, and Smith could write an amusing mainstream academic novel if he wanted to, I'm sure. But I digress. Throoft gets plenty of proof of his wife's flings from his friend Octavia VanderPlatts, a rather large genius. Like Nero Wolfe, she has a greenhouse, but she doesn't grow orchids.

In the second half of the book, the crime novel kicks in. One of the faculty orgy participants is murdered. Throoft is accused of the crime, and it's up to him and VanderPlatts to find the real killer. This is complicated by the fact that someone has just about destroyed VanderPlatts' life.

You won't find any likable characters here (well, I didn't like any of them), but they're real enough, and their problems make for compulsive reading. As I said at the beginning, it's a wild ride, and it's only 99 cents for Kindle. Check it out.

Society of Illustrators: Pulp Art: "Robert Lesser began collecting pulp paintings, comic books, and comic-character toys in the 1950s. As a student at the University of Chicago, Lesser’s literature studies combined with his fascination with popular culture kindled his interest in studying and collecting pulp art and comic memorabilia.

In 1975 he wrote A Celebration of Comic Art and Memorabilia, an informational collectors guide; in 1997 he published Pulp Art: Original Cover Paintings for the Great American Pulp Magazines, a full-color collection of pulp paintings and history that includes expert interpretation."

Heller of a Week Friends/Family/Fans of Max Allan Collins: "Every one of the previous Heller novels (from TRUE DETECTIVE through CHICAGO CONFIDENTIAL) will be reprinted in handsome, uniform trade paperback editions as well as e-books. CHICAGO LIGHTNING and the forthcoming TRIPLE PLAY are two new collections that take the place of (and expand upon) the previous Heller collections, DYING IN THE POSTWAR WORLD and KISSES OF DEATH. CHICAGO LIGHTNING is all the short stories thus far (including several never before collected) and TRIPLE PLAY will include the three Heller novellas-to-date (“Dying in the Postwar World,” “Kisses of Death,” and “Strike Zone”)."

NYPOST.com: "Don't get between an opera singer and her frozen, vegan pad Thai with tofu.

A fight between amateur mezzo soprano Marcella Caprario and fellow shopper Dr. Cathleen London in the frozen-food aisle of the Trader Joe's on the Upper West Side is set to hit Manhattan Criminal Court today."

How can you resist a movie with a title like this one? Not to mention a cast like this one. Great stuff, and it's a very grown-up film for 1950. Joan Fontaine's fiance is Zachary Scott (a guy I always liked because he's from Texas), but she's hot for Robert Ryan, a tough-guy writer. Too bad that Scott has the dough while all Ryan has is sex appeal.

If you watched the trailer, you saw that this is a different role for Fontaine, who was usually more demure. Here, she's a scheming femme fatale who'd be just fine in an even darker movie. Joan Leslie's the good girl, and she's dandy, too.

Mel Ferrer plays a painter who gets all the good lines, and it seems pretty obvious that he's gay, though in 1950 nobody would've admitted that.

The movie's directed by Nicolas Ray, and while it's not as well known as some of his films, it's definitely worth a look if it turns up on TV.

Monday, June 13, 2011

Steve Brewer: Kindle Store: "'Calabama' is hillbilly noir in the vein of TV's 'Justified' or Daniel Woodrell's 'Winter's Bone,' but it's set in the wilds of far Northern California.

It's the story of Eric Newlin, a slacker who works for his father-in-law in the remote town of Redding. A Corvette flies over Eric's head in a freak accident, and he walks away without a scratch. Eric decides it's an omen: His life is about to change. And he's right. His life goes right down the toilet. Within days, he's fallen so far that he finds himself mixed up in a kidnapping scheme with a local crimelord named Rydell Vance.

Leavened with dark humor, 'Calabama' takes a wry look at California's rural, redneck interior, a place full of backwoods bitterness, a precarious place where it's easy for an outsider's life to spiral out of control."

Kabbalah Class eBook: Christopher Benton: Kindle Store: "An introduction to non-Hassidic, Jewish Kabbalah for the serious student. Topics include rabbinic literature, work of the chariot, work of creation, Sefer Yetzirah, Bahir, Zohar, the cube of space, the tree of life, gematria, and more. Ancient themes are integrated with modern science as well as several personal examples."

I met Bob Randisi at a Bouchercon about 30 years ago, so I started reading his books about as soon as the first ones were published. I have copies of the first Henry Po book (The Disappearance of Penny) and the first Miles Jacoby book (Eye in the Ring) on my shelves, and both those private-eyes make brief appearances in Randisi's latest private-eye novel, The End of Brooklyn. There's also a nice little joke about them.

The End of Brooklyn is the third and supposedly the final Nick Delvecchio novel, though I'm pretty sure Randisi would never say never. This one picks up about 15 years after the previous book, and Nick's living in hiding the midwest as a result of his last case. It's a frame story, and in the prologue the guys he's been hiding from come to his house. Nick proceeds to tell them the story that follows, about his investigation into the supposed suicide of one of his high-school classmates with becomes entangled with the murder of his father. Lots of death and dying here, and plenty of good reasons not to return to Brooklyn.

Fast-paced storytelling, some nice twists, and a satisfactory conclusion. When you're in the mood for a private-eye story, this would be a fine choice. Check it out.

NJ.com: "A special unit of airport screeners, charged with detecting suspicious behavior, engaged in racial profiling so frequently at Newark Liberty International Airport that their resentful colleagues called them 'Mexican hunters,' according to an internal federal report."

Showbiz411: "The great rock and roll and R&B singer Carl Gardner, Sr., leader of the Coasters, died yesterday at age 83. “Carl was one of the great lead voices of the early rock and roll era,” says Sam Moore, his Atlantic Records labelmate."

Last week I posted about my visit to Art Scott's house and mentioned that I'd visited Art once before, during the 1982 Bouchercon. As it turns out, Art has photos of that earlier visit, although in looking at them I find it hard to believe that the photos of that skinny guy with the black hair are of me. There are some other familiar faces in the pictures, however, and I can't resist posting a few of the photos here.